defence against _Lancaster_ will be stronger than the reader has even a right to demand. _Falstaff_ encounters _Coleville_ in the field, and, having demanded his name, is ready to assail him; but _Coleville_ asks him if he is not Sir _John Falstaff_; thereby implying a purpose of surrender. _Falstaff_ will not so much as furnish him with a pretence, and answers only, that _he is as good a man_. “_Do you yield Sir, or shall I sweat for you?_” “_I think_,” says Coleville, “_you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought yield me._” This fact, and the incidents with which it is accompanied, speak loudly; it seems to have been contrived by the author on purpose to take off a rebuke so authoritatively made by _Lancaster_. The fact is set before our eyes to confute the censure: _Lancaster_ himself seems to give up his charge, tho’ not his ill will; for upon _Falstaff_’s asking leave to pass through Glostershire, and artfully desiring that, upon _Lancaster_’s return to Court, _he might stand well in his report, Lancaster_ seems in his answer to mingle malice and acquittal. “_Fare ye well, Falstaff, I in my condition shall better speak of you than you deserve._” “_I would_,” says _Falstaff_, who is left behind in the scene, “_You had but the wit; ’twere better than your Dukedom._” He continues on the stage some time chewing the cud of dishonour, which, with all his facility, he cannot well swallow. “_Good faith_” says he, accounting to himself as well as he could for the injurious conduct of _Lancaster_, “_this sober-blooded boy does not love me._” This he might well believe. “_A man_,” says he, “_cannot make him laugh; there’s none of these demure boys come to any proof; but that’s no marvel, they drink no sack._”—_Falstaff_ then it seems knew no drinker of sack who was a Coward; at least the instance was not home and familiar to him.—“_They all_,” says he, “_fall into a kind of Male green sickness, and are generally fools and Cowards._” Anger has a privilege, and I think _Falstaff_ has a right to turn the tables upon _Lancaster_ if he can; but _Lancaster_ was certainly no fool, and I think upon the whole no Coward; yet the Male green sickness which _Falstaff_ talks of seems to have infected his manners and aspect, and taken from him all external indication of gallantry and courage. He behaves in the battle of Shrewsbury beyond the promise of his complexion and deportment: “_By heaven thou hast deceived me Lancaster_,” says Harry, “_I did not think thee Lord of such a spirit!_” Nor was his father less surprized “_at his holding Lord Percy at the point with lustier maintenance than he did look for from such an unripe warrior._” But how well and unexpectedly soever he might have behaved upon that occasion, he does not seem to have been of a temper to trust fortune too much or too often with his safety; therefore it is that, in order to keep the event in his own hands, he loads the Die, in the present case, with villainy and